Experience: I was blinded by a school science experiment

‘The doctors didn’t know what to do with me. They hadn’t seen burns like mine since the war’

Throughout my childhood, I had 20:20 vision. But two weeks before my 12th birthday, in my first year of secondary school in Cheshire, my teacher asked me to conduct a science experiment, and gave me a pestle and mortar. I was told to measure three kinds of powder: black, orange and white. I did as I was told, but when I mixed them together, they exploded. I saw the flash, and then, what seemed like ages later, I heard the supersonic bang. Molten lava hit me in the face, but I felt no pain.

I vividly remember standing there in a state of utter calm. I thought I was in a dream, that I’d wake up in a minute, but no matter how hard I struggled to swim to the surface of consciousness, I couldn’t wake up. I didn’t understand how terrifying it all was until the teacher carried me down the corridor and I heard people saying, “Who is that?” That’s when I knew I was unrecognisable.

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